{"id":226374,"date":"2026-05-10T15:19:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T15:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/226374\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T15:19:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T15:19:05","slug":"cdc-head-assures-americans-hantavirus-outbreak-isnt-the-new-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/226374\/","title":{"rendered":"CDC head assures Americans hantavirus outbreak isn’t the new COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"

Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya urged the public not to panic over the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship<\/a>, underscoring that it\u2019s not like COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Bhattacharya, who also\u00a0helms\u00a0the National Institutes of Health (NIH), defended the CDC\u2019s\u00a0contact tracing methods\u00a0revolving around\u00a0the seven passengers who\u00a0already flew back several weeks ago,\u00a0and insisted the agency is following its protocols.<\/p>\n

Acting CDC Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya discussed the hantavirus outbreak during an interview on CNN\u2019s State of the Union with Jake Tapper. CNN<\/p>\n

The cruise ship MV Hondius anchors near the port of Granadilla after a hantavirus outbreak onboard. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to cause a public panic,\u201d Bhattacharya told CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union\u201d on Sunday. \u201cWe want to treat it with our hantavirus protocols that were successful at containing outbreaks in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID. This is not going to lead to the [same] kind of outbreak,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be panicking when the evidence doesn\u2019t warrant it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hantavirus, a disease commonly found in rodents<\/a>, can cause nasty symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, fevers, lung issues, and more.<\/p>\n

A staggering 38% of those who get respiratory symptoms die, per the CDC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Passengers getting removed from the MV Hondius after arriving in Tenerife on May 10, 2026. AP<\/p>\n

While hantavirus can spread from person to person, it requires close contact and is widely seen as much less contagious than the COVID-19 respiratory illness, experts say.<\/p>\n

An outbreak took place on the MV Hondius cruise ship, which had about 150 people on board before it began disembarking over the weekend.<\/p>\n

At least three passengers have died and five others were seriously ill with hantavirus symptoms since April 11, according to World Health Organization officials.<\/p>\n

The ship anchored near\u00a0Spain\u2019s Canary Islands, where passengers have begun disembarking.\u00a0There are 17 American passengers aboard that ship<\/a>, who may quarantine at a facility in Nebraska once they get back in the US.<\/p>\n

MV Hondius passengers waving from a military bus after leaving the ship. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CDC has been in contact with each of the passengers,\u201d Bhattacharya explained. \u201cWe\u2019re doing interviews with them, and we\u2019re preparing to have them evacuated to the Nebraska facility at the University of Nebraska, which is a fantastic facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bhattacharya noted that the CDC is following the protocols used in 2018 during the\u00a0Andes hantavirus outbreak in Epuy\u00e9n, Argentina. That outbreak\u00a0caused 11 deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the latest on the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will include advice given to these \u2026 travelers, including an offer to stay in Nebraska if they\u2019d like, or if they want to go back home, and their home situation allows it, to safely drive them home without exposing other people on the way, and then be put in the control, put under the auspices of their state and local public health agencies, with the CDC support all the way,\u201d the acting CDC director said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The seven American passengers who departed the ship last month after the first passenger died are spread\u00a0out\u00a0across\u00a0Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the MV Hondius passengers boarding a plane bound for the Netherlands. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

It can take some six weeks before people start showing hantavirus symptoms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The acting CDC boss explained that passengers who flew on flights with those seven Americans are \u201cconsidered contacts of contacts\u201d and do not require\u00a0a more rigorous check on how far the potential spread may have gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe passengers on the ship\u00a0that\u00a0flew home were not symptomatic when they flew home,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause\u00a0the virus doesn\u2019t spread unless somebody has active symptoms, those passengers on the planes are considered contacts of contacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s\u00a0not a reason to do that kind of sort of\u00a0recursive contact tracing,\u201d he added. \u201cBut you do want to make\u00a0sure that you check them regularly, so that \u2026 if they develop symptoms or if there\u2019s other considerations, give them advice especially\u00a0to reduce their contacts with others when it\u2019s appropriate to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bhattacharya also underscored that he and the appropriate CDC teams \u201chave been tracking the situation for a while now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya urged the public not to panic over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3930,5058,6708,16004,86145,61138,9,11,10,58],"class_list":["post-226374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-cdc","tag-cnn","tag-covid-vaccine","tag-cruises","tag-hantavirus","tag-jake-tapper","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}